Lobster Pot

A lobster
trap sunk in the ocean with a rope and buoy
attached to mark it and retrieve it. Lobster pots/traps used
to be made of wood, with rope-net entrances for the lobsters: they could crawl in through the cone-like net, but
not out.

These days most "pots"
are rectangles made of plastic-covered metal mesh.

Chick or Chicken

A lobster five to seven years
old, weighing about one pound (450 grams)
in its shell. It's prohibited to catch
lobsters weighing much less than this.

Legal size is determined not by weight
but by measurement of the carapace (from
the rear of the eye socket to the rear
of the main body shell).

A legal lobster
must measure at least 3.25 inches (8.26 cm).
A lobster smaller than this is called a short and
must be returned to the sea.

Select

A lobster weighing
between 1.5 and 2 pounds (680 grams to 910
grams). These are the choicest because they
make a good one-person portion. (Over half
the weight of a lobster is shell, so a Select
gives you less than 1 pound/450 grams of meat.)

Jumbo

An unprecise term
for a lobster substantially larger than a
Select. Lobsters can live for more than a
century and weigh as much as 44 pounds (20
kilos). Very large lobsters are often respected
and returned to the sea.

If you buy a large
lobster, make sure you have a pot big enough
to cook it in!

Cull

A lobster that's
missing a claw. Claw meat is choice, so culls
sell for less than lobsters with both claws.

Blue Lobster

Almost all New England lobsters are blue-green to green-brown when live in the sea. They turn bright red when cooked. Lobsters of other colors are rare: a live blue lobster, its color caused by a genetic defect, is one in two million. A live red lobster is even rarer: one in 10 million, and a yellow or calico(mottled orange and black) lobster rarer still: one in 30 million.